Upon arriving on the scene of an accident or responding to some other life-threatening incident, emergency first-responders need access a victim's personal information in order to adequately assess the condition of and provide treatment to the victim. For example, first-responders might need to inquiry into a victim's medical history, and other emergency related personal details such as, age, blood type, medical allergies, past medical conditions, emergency contacts and the like. Needless to say, if the victim is incapacitated this information cannot be obtained, leaving first-responder to existing solutions, such as medical ID tags or searching through a victim's personal possessions to retrieve relevant data.
Other means of accessing medical records are known in the art such as providing portable health care histories that allows patients to carry the medical records with them. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,628, “Portable health care history information system,” issued to Logan, describes a system that provides restricted access to a user's individual medical records through the use of a computer-readable identity card. Presumably, an identity card provides user identification from any location, that is, provided a computer and a card reader are readily available at the scene of the accident. Other examples of portable health care histories are taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,523,009, “Individualized patient electronic medical records system,” issued to Wilkins (patient records stored on CDROM or similar mobile storage device), and U.S. Patent Application 2002/0120470, “Portable personal and medical information system and method for making and using system” applied for by Trice (patient records on a memory stick with USB dongle attached to a key ring). While Logan, Wilkins and Trice may provide portable access to medical information, the information is unlikely to be up-to-date and could be lost or unavailable if the disk or other storage means is damaged.
Another scheme of accessing medical records involves remote access over a communications network, which could avoid the problem of staleness of medical data encountered by Logan, Wilkins and Trice. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,028,190, “Method and system for electronic delivery of sensitive information,” issued to Burakoff et al describes a mechanism for requiring and providing consent prior to obtaining access to sensitive information, such as health records over an Internet connection (e.g. via e-mail). Burakoff's scheme presumes active consent, whereby the owner of the information must react to a request for access in order to indicate consent. This is not applicable in a situation where a user is incapacitated or otherwise impaired and therefore unable to provide consent.
An alternative approach utilizing a credential mechanism is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 7,213,266, “Systems and methods for managing and protecting electronic content and applications,” issued to Maher, et al. which describes an approach for controlling the distribution of electronic content which relies on digital certificates to serve as the credentials and coordinates the content control through a certification service. While it would be possible to use this type of system to construct a remote medical history distribution mechanism, it would be impractical due to the high level of complexity.
Hence, there is a need for a method and system of remotely accessing medically relevant data over a communications network that is convenient and reliable yet secure in that it protects the privacy of the victim while disseminating an individual's medically relevant data in an emergency.